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"ipsum principem cernere in publico": the visibility of the Roman emperor from 27BCE to 40CE

“IPSUM PRINCIPEM CERNERE IN PUBLICO”:
THE VISIBILITY OF THE ROMAN EMPEROR FROM 27BCE TO 40CE
by
Matthew Taylor
______________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CLASSICS)
August 2012
Copyright 2012 Matthew Taylor

This dissertation tracks and analyzes the public visibility of the Roman emperors from Augustus to Gaius, with the aim of investigating exactly how the administration of Rome and its empire was accomplished under the rule of one man, and how the systems for this may have developed as the role of the emperor became more entrenched in both society and its discourse. I examine in particular the people’s conception of the role of their emperor in government and society, and the relationship between that role and the preservation of one man’s sovereignty over his subjects. Ultimately, the dissertation examines to what extent the experience of being governed is instrumental in the subjugation of all sectors of society to rule by a single individual. ❧ I argue that focusing on the emperor’s visibility is the ideal way to establish a hierarchy among the various factors that may have enforced and maintained his sovereignty. In essence, I believe that any and all of these factors were not relevant unless they were mobilized frequently into the public sphere so as to make subjects aware that they were in play, and that the primary vector for this effect was the person of the emperor himself. For example, the apparent conflict between an explanation based in military might and one on enlightened legality can best be resolved by investigating which of these forces was made visible at any given moment, which was actively communicated in a public context. To this end, I attempt to catalogue and analyze the contexts and frequency of his appearances, the composition of his audiences, and the activities in which he was actually seen to be engaged. ❧ I structure the dissertation according to the various personas the emperor would enact in public. This approach is based both in the way the Principate was embedded in the discursive forms and public practices of Rome’s previous social and political tradition, and in the fact that our sources frequently schematize the emperor’s appearance and performance according to such criteria. Such a structure not only presents a logical method for organizing the evidence, but also presents an intriguing analytical picture of that evidence in and of itself; indeed, in the divisions among the sources we can observe a tendency for particular personas to be manifested selectively to specific segments of the population. Thus the senatorial aristocracy preserves for us the clearest record of the emperor as senator, while provincial sources encounter him most often as the judge in their domestic or international disputes. My central thesis is that every such appearance, and every persona that was adopted, had as its central aim to instill within his subjects the conviction that they were being actively governed by the emperor, and that this was a condition that was in their own interest. Thus the emperor would appropriate suitable personas for every context in order to communicate a robust experience of management and inherent security, mobilizing publicly the various factors listed above, but making a show of doing so in service of his people. While such display would, of course, emphasize the supremacy of the emperor, it also implicated every subject’s interest in the practice of keeping him supreme.

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“IPSUM PRINCIPEM CERNERE IN PUBLICO”:
THE VISIBILITY OF THE ROMAN EMPEROR FROM 27BCE TO 40CE
by
Matthew Taylor
______________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CLASSICS)
August 2012
Copyright 2012 Matthew Taylor